


Welcoming Them Back to the Dry Earth

by OrdinaryRealities



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Warlock meets Nanny and Brother Francis again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22312228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrdinaryRealities/pseuds/OrdinaryRealities
Summary: Being raised as the antichrist makes for a very odd childhood.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Warlock Dowling, Crowley & Warlock Dowling, Warlock Dowling & The Them (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 151
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019





	Welcoming Them Back to the Dry Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jules-al-c](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=jules-al-c).



> This was a pinch hit for the Good Omens holiday swap for jules-al-c. My prompt was "Warlock has some strange childhood memories," although I borrowed my setup a bit from their alternate prompt of Anathema and Newt going on a double date with the ineffable husbands. My apologies for any missing pieces in the second half of the fic. My computer ate it twice, so I'm posting it quick before I lose anything a third time. 
> 
> Title from "In the Leupold Scope" by Brian Turner, though the story is quite a bit less haunting than the poem. 
> 
> As always, if I've said anything accidentally racist/sexist/ableist or otherwise ignorant, please let me know so I can do better next time!

It was a slow day at The Melting Pot; both of Warlock’s fellow waitstaffers had been sent home. Warlock loitered near the bar, one hopeful eye on the door. Thomas, behind the bar, had pulled out his math textbook to study. The owner was in the kitchen, clanging pots together, though Warlock wasn’t sure why. 

When a blast of cold air announced a new set of customers, Warlock made it to the hostess stand before the door closed behind them. 

“Four? Right this way.” 

The first odd thing he noticed was how dry they all were, coming in out of the rain. Even the old gentleman wearing all tan didn’t have any droplets on his shoulders – Warlock glanced down – or a damp cuff ‘round his ankles. He came to a halt at the corner of the table between the two women. “Can I start you off with anything to drink?” There was something off about the redheaded woman to his right too. “My name is William and I will be your server today.” 

Introducing himself as Warlock, at best, sparked a five minute “Oh really? How odd.” “Sherlock?!” “Do you book children’s parties?” and at worst had lost him tables who thought his name might inspire satanism. He’d started putting William even on the job applications.

The woman to his left frowned at him like William was a name she hadn’t expected. She looked, he thought uncharitably, like she had made every piece of clothing she owned out of some eighteenth-century ragbag. He half expected her bushy hair to be controlled by a pair of knitting needles stuck through it. She had no right to look at him like he was the odd one in this situation. (He glanced down to make sure that his uniform was still neat and clean.) 

The younger man tapped her on the elbow. “Anathema, love, what do you think?” 

Warlock must have heard the name wrong. Who was named Anathema? Perhaps this was the one table that wouldn’t have looked odd at the name ‘Warlock.’

Warlock leaned on the bar as Thomas pulled down the requested wine and found appropriate glasses. (Warlock could have sworn that they only served two wines, a cheap white and cheaper red, but the grey-haired man had pointed to it on the menu when he ordered, and sure enough, a very confused Thomas had found the bottle under the bar in a disused cabinet.) 

“There’s something odd about that woman. The one with the red hair.” Warlock glanced over at the table again as he spoke, unsettled.

Thomas paused in his hunt for clean wine glasses to frown over at the table. “With the red hair? I thought that was a dude. Is it a- Do you think he- she-”

“They,” Warlock supplied.

“Is trans?” Thomas nodded an acknowledgement of the pronoun.

Warlock shrugged. “Maybe?” He didn’t want to think that would register as odd to him, but he was his father’s son. 

He returned to the table, glasses and bottle in hand, and considered the person covertly. He wasn’t sure now why he had assumed that they were a woman, except that something about their stride had reminded him so much of Nanny. He busied himself taking their orders. 

The older man began, straightening his bowtie. (These four really did look like they belonged at four different tables in the cafeteria, between the bird’s nest woman, bowtie dude, nerd extraordinaire, and the aging gender-ambiguous rockstar.) 

“I’ll have the deviled eggs for starters,” he beamed at the redhead, “and then I’ll do a half order of the wings, ah, ‘Hotter than hell,’ please.” He looked inordinately pleased with himself. The younger man snorted and then blushed. Warlock assumed that the redhead was staring him down, but the angle was such that it would be obvious if he tried to check. 

“Satan’s sake, Angel.” The tone was fond, and Warlock blinked back another memory of Nanny.

After putting in their order Warlock slouched against the bar. In an undertone he informed Thomas, “There’s something weird about that older couple.” He was nearly certain he’d heard the older gentleman toasting Anathema’s – he was positive that was what they were calling her – new velocipede. (In the back of his head he heard Brother Francis congratulating him, when Nanny finally took the training wheels off of his bicycle, on “mastering the velocipede.”) 

“There’s something weird about you.” Thomas gave him an unimpressed look.

“Yes.” Warlock was patient. “Nanny and the gardener are responsible for nearly all of my weirdnesses,” except the name Thomas didn’t know Warlock had, “and that’s who this couple remind me of.”

“OK,” Thomas’s voice was too cheerful in the way that it got when he was pitying Warlock. Thomas wasn’t Warlock’s least favorite co-worker. He never called Warlock a poor little rich boy, even when that was what Warlock was calling himself (derisively) in his head. He pitied Warlock though, really loudly for never actually saying it out loud. Pepper and Brian would call him out if he was wallowing, and they never pitied him for things that weren’t actually all that bad. Warlock had loved Nanny and Brother Francis, and they had loved him. So what if they weren’t his actual parents? He’d had loving adults until the age of eleven, and sort of got along with his mom now that he was old enough.

“Tell me how they remind me of the servants who raised you.”

Warlock sighed, lowering his voice just in case they could be heard over the lively conversation happening at the table of four. 

“For a start, they were completely dry when they came in. The best umbrella in the world doesn’t stop your cuffs from getting damp.”

Thomas made a skeptical noise.

“Then there’s the redhead. They just said, ‘for Satan’s sake’ instead of ‘for god’s sake’. My nanny used to do that all the time.”

“So maybe they’re both in some strange religious sect or something.” Thomas frowned. “Why do you think it’s weirder than that?”

Warlock took a breath. He didn’t share Nanny and Brother Francis stories with just anyone. They tended to have the same effect as his name. “Nanny Ashtoreth had this lullaby she’d sing me, about how while I was asleep I should dream of pain – other people’s, not mine – and doom and darkness, so I would have sweet dreams.” The lyric about blood and brains was too gory for Warlock to repeat in a restaurant, even if the people who were going to be eating couldn’t hear. 

“For real?” Warlock could see Thomas adding a new level of odd rich people to his internal measurements. 

He sighed. “I stopped telling the other kids about them after the day I broke my arm.”

Thomas put his textbook down and settled down with his elbows on the bar. “Oh?”

Warlock bit his lip. “Look, by now I definitely know how crazy it sounds. Even at the time, I must have known. I never told my parents. I’d fallen out of a tree. I wasn’t supposed to be climbing in them anyway – I might hurt sister birch and brother oak –” He rolled his eyes, “and it’s one thing for a gardener to tell you that we should be nice to plants, but he was equally stern about not hurting sister slug.”

Thomas snorted. 

Warlock glanced at the table, but they were still deep in conversation. “Anyway, I was climbing and I saw Nanny and I knew I wasn’t supposed to be up there – she always seemed happy when I broke the rules, but not Brother Francis’s rules – and my foot slipped and I fell. When- Look, when I landed, I had that moment. The adrenaline hits, and you don’t really know yet if you’re hurt, you know? So I looked at the arm I landed on,” he swallowed. He’d never been good at gore, and even just the memory of it was enough to turn his stomach. “I’d fallen a little more than twice my height. Maybe I was seven or eight, so what, six or seven feet? And I landed right on the arm.”

“Could you see the bone?” Clearly, Thomas wasn’t as squeamish. 

Warlock nodded. “I really could. I was kind of surprised, I’d thought there would be blood everywhere, you know? But I could definitely see it. I was never the sort of kid to make up gory details.”

“I’d never have guessed.” Thomas was amused. “Can you still feel the bump?” He held out his own arm and pressed a finger midway down on the thumb side. “I’ve got a little bump here from when I broke my arm. I was playing ball and I ran right into an oncoming car. A slow car, but still.”

Warlock swallowed. This was the unbelievable part. “I don’t. Because the next thing I knew, Nanny and Brother Francis got there, both at once, and Brother Francis reached out a hand,” Warlock demonstrated, “And I was looking, OK? I was still watching and I SAW my arm snap back into place. It straightened out and... unbroke. By the time I’d recovered enough to look around, the snapped limb was back on the tree. Nanny must have done that, while Brother Francis was mending me. She had… a way with plants.”

Thomas looked like he was trying not to be skeptical.

“Look, I know how it sounds. I would never believe it myself if I hadn’t seen it. I like explanations for things.” Softer, “Believe me, I’ve tried to forget it.”

“OK. So your nanny was, like, Mary Poppins or something.” Thomas took a breath. “Alright. You look freaked out enough over it, and I do know that you’re not one for making up gore. You can barely handle rare meat.” He swallowed. “What sort of a way with plants? Actually,” he frowned, “Do you want to check on that table’s food? If they remind you of your magical servants?”

Warlock rolled his eyes. “The food’s not ready yet. And they’re still talking.” He glanced at the table, but they hadn’t made much progress on the wine yet.

Thomas still looked nervous.

Warlock decided to put his mind at ease. “They were kind of useless with it though. I mean, they could unbreak bones and whatever, but mostly they just used it for little things. Nanny used to yell at the plants sometimes in the middle of the night, if Brother Francis ever talked about them. Like, one day in January he said he missed spring blossoms, so that night, sure enough, I saw Nanny sneak out to yell at the plants after I was asleep. The next day, there it is the middle of winter and all Brother Francis’s apple trees are in bloom.” He rolled his eyes. “And Nanny never let me eat the apples off of them either. Brother Francis had to sneak me apples when Nanny wasn’t looking.”

The bell dinged and Warlock pushed off the counter and went to carry out the food to the table. Normally Thomas would have helped, but apparently he was still spooked by the idea that magic was real and thought hiding behind the bar might save him. Warlock handed the food around and watched as the redhead flicked his tongue out at the younger man the way Nanny used to, so fast that Warlock could never get his tongue in and out once before Nanny managed it three or four times. The man looked more than (in Warlock’s opinion) suitably cowed by this. The other two people at the table were hiding grins. 

“And the pasta for you. Can I get you anything else? Salt, pepper, cheese for the pasta? Enjoy your meal.”

Thomas was still looking intimidated when Warlock returned to the bar. Warlock pressed his lips together and cast around for a humanizing anecdote. 

“Brother Francis taught me to fence. I told him I wanted to be a knight for Halloween and the next thing I knew he’d found real swords for both of us to use somewhere and was teaching me how to stand and the names of the different swings.” 

Thomas didn’t look reassured. 

There was one surefire way to fix things when people reacted this way. 

Certainly, it wouldn’t be fixed by reminiscences about how certain they both used to seem that Warlock could destroy the world. Warlock had secretly (guiltily) been a little bit relieved when they left, although he occasionally still woke up in a cold sweat, certain that they’d left not because the moment had passed at which he could have ended the world but because they felt he was set on his path now. Nightmares of accidentally destroying the world and everything he cared about. Mostly he managed to be grateful that they had allowed the moment to pass without placing added pressure on him instead.

Warlock sighed and pasted a smile across his face. “I sure got you good, didn’t I? Are you scared, Thomas?” 

Thomas turned to face him. Warlock watched his belief teeter for a moment. In the end though, no one’s belief stood up to Warlock’s teasing derision. 

Thomas laughed delightedly. “You- ! William, I didn’t think you had it in you! Gardeners who fence, and, and, Nannies who fix broken bones!” Warlock felt the sudden quiet at the table behind him before he heard it. Thomas, still chuckling, reached across the bar to clap Warlock on the shoulder and then turned towards the kitchen. “I’m going to sneak out for a cigarette.” His eyes crinkled with appreciation of the joke. “My nerves need it.” 

A glance over Warlock’s shoulder showed the table of four eating in a single-minded way that suggested they had been listening very hard a moment ago.

Someday Warlock was going to figure out how to communicate it right, the way that they were both just people, for all their extra abilities. Good people, too, much better than Warlock’s father. There were people who shouldn’t have power, but that never seemed to stop anyone from giving it to them anyway. Nanny and Brother Francis actually deserved their power. Warlock smiled, thinking of the security guard who had tripped down the stairs and broken his arm after Nanny saw him looming over a maid one day. Warlock today could make inferences about just how much the man had deserved it, but even at six Warlock knew that it was nothing but just after making Sally cry that way. 

Warlock stood slowly, unsure what he was going to say when he reached the table. An apology for getting loud while they were eating or a check-in on their food?

He was saved from making that choice when the door opened and Pepper and Brian blew in with a couple of strangers. Warlock rushed over, delighted at an excuse to ignore his unsettling table for a few more moments. 

“Hullo, you two. Just can’t stay away, can you?” He grinned at them. “Four?”

The blond boy smiled at him as if he were greeting an old friend. “That would be great. Would it be alright if we sat by our friends though?” He gestured unnecessarily at Warlock’s other table.

“Sure thing,” Warlock fumbled for the menus. “Pick a table, any table.” At least these four had all been affected by the rain. The blond boy’s hair streamed down his face in sodden curls. 

The blond grinned at the older gentleman before addressing Warlock. “If we do are you going to pull it out of our ears?”

Warlock found himself smiling back. “Tell you what, I won’t even guess which table you’ve picked.”

Warlock handed the menus around as Pepper and Brian’s friends sat. “Can I start you off with anything to drink?” 

“William!” Brian ignored him. “This is Adam and Wensleydale and Newt,” he gestured wildly at each friend in turn, “and Anathema and Aziraphale and Crowley. Everyone, this is William.”

Warlock went still. There was an association at the edge of his brain, maybe only because he’d already been thinking of Brother Francis and Nanny. He’d heard the names Crowley and Aziraphale before. Mechanically, he took down drink orders and returned to the table. The thump of the kitchen door announced that Thomas was done with his cigarette, but a shout of laughter informed him that Thomas was chatting with the owner and wouldn’t be back anytime soon. He almost had it. 

He brought out a second bottle of wine for his first table and as he was working out the cork the gre- Aziraphale palmed the cork from the first bottle and snuck his hand towards Crowley’s hair. (Warlock supposed that explained Adam’s earlier amusement.) 

“Angel, if that cork goes anywhere near my ear you’re going to discover how perfectly it corks up your ear.” Crowley sounded more amused than annoyed.

“Crowley, my dear,” Aziraphale pouted. “I wasn’t going to put it in your ear.”

Warlock had nightmares regularly as a child. In hindsight, that seemed reasonable when your most trusted adults kept insisting you were going to destroy the world. Mortality was scary enough without worrying that you would be the cause of it. Going to Nanny sometimes made things worse instead of better, and so on this particular night Warlock had slipped on his shoes and skipped Nanny's room to tiptoe out to Brother Francis’s cottage. Nanny had been out there that night anyway, Warlock found when he overheard part of a conversation.

“Crowley! I can’t lie to the archangel Gabriel. Don’t be absurd!”

“Aziraphale,” Nanny’s voice had been lower than usual, but just as comforting. “I’m not asking you to lie to anyone. You’re just thwarting me, Angel, how could that be ba- Warlock?”

Warlock popped the cork out and took advantage of that to walk around the table. Crowley still had that funny little snake tattoo under their right ear. They caught Warlock’s eye. 

“It is you, isn’t it. You’re going by William these days?”

Warlock glanced at Pepper and Brian. They both looked confused. Adam was beaming. (Maybe Adam was just a super happy guy. If he wasn’t careful his face might stick that way. Maybe it already had.) Thomas was still in the kitchen. 

Warlock lifted a shoulder. “Just when I’m waiting tables. You’d be surprised how many people behave like my name is going to spread satanism.” Warlock rolled his eyes. “Like it’s an illness they all refused to vaccinate for.”

(He pushed down the knot of panic that wondered if this was the end of the world. If Crowley and Aziraphale had reappeared for that, and not just to see Pepper and Brian.)

“Your name isn’t William?” Pepper sounded confused. 

“Wait,” Brian sounded like he was coming to a conclusion and trying not to laugh until he knew it was right. “How do you know Aziraphale and Crowley?”

Warlock glanced at them. “It's Warlock. And they raised me.” He knew that he’d told Brian and Pepper enough for them to know he’d been raised by servants, so he didn’t understand why that revelation made Pepper look dubious and Brian laugh. 

“Really? No offense, William, but you won’t even kill flour moths. I had to move that dead bird last month because you teared up every time you passed it.” 

Warlock spared a thought amidst his confusion to feel victorious. He _knew_ it was Pepper who had moved the bird so he didn’t have to keep walking past it, even though she had refused to admit it.

“Never mind that,” Brian gasped a ragged breath, trying to speak and laugh at once. “I’ve been to the pub with William. He doesn’t even order his own drink without consulting the rest of his friends. You thought he was the antichrist?”

Pepper frowned at Brian. “Adam consults other people too. That’s part of being a good leader.”

Warlock snorted, the knot in his stomach going away. ‘Thought’ sounded like they had been wrong about Warlock’s ability to end the world. “Pepper. The world knows I’m not a leader.” At best, Warlock felt, he could hope to be a loner instead of a follower. He registered the other implication in her sentence. “So you’re the antichrist?” He looked at Adam. The other boy didn’t have a face to inspire confidence. Probably he played rugby and expected everyone to do what he wanted them to. 

“I was.” Adam studied Warlock. “But I refused to end the world, so now I’m just Adam. It’s nice to meet you, Warlock. I couldn’t have done it without you, I don’t think.”

Warlock frowned at him. “I’ve never met you before. How could I have helped you?”

It was Na- Crowley who answered. “You spoke to Hastur at the fields of Meggido soon after your eleventh birthday. Do you remember? It took time for Heaven and Hell to figure out where Armageddon was actually happening.” Hastur La Vista. Warlock did remember him, vaguely, if only for the weird name. 

“The white guy trying to tell us all about a culture he wasn’t from?” Warlock struggled to remember anything else about the man. Demon, he supposed.

“Gave me time to come to my senses,” Adam agreed. 

Aziraphale chimed in. “And Crowley and I thought that you were the antichrist, so that’s what we told head office. We spent eleven years trying to shape and mold you instead of Adam, so he grew up without any angelic or demonic influences.”

Adam sparkled at Warlock. “You made it so that my only influences were human ones.”

Warlock shoved down the fact that he’d been raised by an actual angel and demon to panic about later and smiled at the antichrist. “I grew up – what, angelic? Occult? – so you didn’t have to. You’re welcome.”

Warlock waited until they were leaving to stop Nanny and Bro- Aziraphale. 

“I… Look, for whatever it’s worth, just so you know, I mean, I don’t think… I don’t think anyone raised by you would think the world was in need of destroying.”

Crowley looked skeptical. 

Aziraphale beamed. “Oh, do you really think so? We did hope that my influence-”

Warlock frowned. “Of course. How could anyone raised by two people who love this world so much think that it was something to destroy? Who taught me to love the variety of cultures and lifeforms on this planet? It sure wasn’t dad.”

Crowley straightened and cleared his throat in a way that made Warlock quite sure he was trying not to cry. Aziraphale was daubing at his eyes unapologetically. 

“My dear boy.” 

Warlock lifted a shoulder, already turning back to his seat by the bar. “Thanks for raising me or whatever.” He let out a breath as the door closed and slouched onto the stool. Thomas frowned. “I can’t believe you told me a bunch of horror stories about your – parents – just because they came for lunch.”

Warlock smiled, unapologetic. “Sorry Thomas. I’ll try not to do it again.”


End file.
